If the Tampa Bay Lightning play like they did on Saturday night against the Colorado Avalanche moving forward this season, the team will likely tumble down the standings. Fans in attendance were ‘treated’ to a sloppy night for the home team, as evidenced by the fact that goaltender Ben Bishop was forced to make 40 (!) saves. With all that said, somehow the Bolts turned their performance into a 3-2 shootout victory. It counts just the same.
Considering the fact that they were so vastly outplayed of the course of the game’s last two periods, it’s a good thing that the Lightning were able to get on the board early in Saturday’s contest. Less than two minutes in, with Jan Hejda in the box, Ryan Callahan scored his 15th goal of the year to put the Bolts up 1-0. He took a great feed from Alex Killorn and roofed the puck past Semyon Varlamov, who was solid all night long for the Avalanche.
The Lightning took that early goal and used it to build on what has been described as the team’s best period of the season. In that opening frame, the Avalanche had nothing. The Bolts were in control. By the time the intermission rolled around, it was Tampa that had a 15-5 advantage on the shot clock. ‘Textbook’ is an apt descriptor.
Then momentum swung sharply in Colorado’s direction.
Like the Bolts in the first, Colorado scored early in the second. Ryan O’Reilly’s eighth goal of the season, an even strength marker, was scored after a prolonged and dominant shift for the Avalanche in the Tampa zone. That shift was a sign of things to come.
While they weren’t able to beat Ben Bishop again in that second period, it was all Avalanche from start to finish. The Lightning controlled the first period shot clock by a 15-5 margin; the Avalanche controlled the second period shot clock by a 20-9 margin. There’s no explanation for that kind of shift. Hockey is hockey.
After weathering that middle stanza storm, the Bolts took the lead again early in the third when Anton Stralman floated his third of the year past Varlamov at 4:08. Assisted by Valtteri Filppula, Stralman was able to sneak the puck under the Colorado tender’s leg and into the back of the net. The goal gave the Lightning a 2-1 lead they didn’t deserve.
Any reasonable person could have forgiven the Avalanche had they decided to pack up and roll over after that Stralman goal. It could have been a backbreaker. Instead, they just kept plodding along. Patrick Roy’s Avalanche kept the pressure on the Bolts and eventually broke through. With only seven seconds left on the clock, Nathan MacKinnon scored his ninth of the year to push the game into extra time. Credit MacKinnon and his team for fighting until that final buzzer.
Overtime solved nothing, and so a dreaded shootout was needed. Nikita Kucherov and Matt Duchene traded goals in the first two rounds before Ryan Callahan was able to deke the puck around Varlamov in the third round to seal the deal on the Lightning’s 3-2 victory.
It wasn’t a perfect performance, or even close to a perfect performance. The two points still count. But, as mentioned in the intro to this piece, the team will have to be a lot better moving forward if it wants to keep winning games with regularity. Here’s hoping the skaters take Ben Bishop out for some ice cream tonight. He deserves it.
As always, thanks for reading.
Michael Stuart has been the Tampa Bay Lightning writer for HockeyBuzz since 2012. Visit his archive to read more or follow him on Twitter.